Sen. Joe Lieberman Wants Google To Let Users Flag ‘Terrorist Content’

Joe Lieberman has always been a great pioneer for internet freedom. Last year, he suggested that the United States should implement an internet kill switch in the event of a cyberattack by taking its cues from China. Now Lieberman is calling for the world’s most popular search engine to censor material that could potentially be used to spread terrorist information.

Lieberman sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page asking the company to implement a system where users can report websites harboring terrorism and Google will remove them from their Blogger platform. Lieberman brought up the case of Jose Pimentel, who was recently arrested in New York for attempting to make a pipe bomb, and *gasp* used the internet to do it! Lieberman gave Google some praise for banning any terrorist content from YouTube and allowing users to flag videos, but insisted they do more and implement a similar system on their search platform.

From the letter:

“Google sets its own standards for materials allowable on its servers. Through your updated YouTube standards, Google has affirmatively stated that terrorist content will not be permitted on some of your sites. I strongly believe that Google should expand that standard to include your other platforms. The private sector plays an important role in protecting our homeland from the preeminent threat of violent Islamist extremism, and Google’s inconsistent standards are adversely affecting our ability to counter violent Islamist extremism online.”

These kinds of policy decisions are almost always carried out subjectively, and if Google is given carte blanche to censor material they think could potentially influence terrorists, who knows what Blogger pages they would target.